Sport
26 January, 2023
Championships to return for first time in decades
Maryborough has secured a coup, with the Victorian Country Cup Eight-Ball Carnival to be held in the town this year. The tournament will attract around 300 players to the region, with 36 teams of at least eight players set to make the journey. Teams...
Maryborough has secured a coup, with the Victorian Country Cup Eight-Ball Carnival to be held in the town this year.
The tournament will attract around 300 players to the region, with 36 teams of at least eight players set to make the journey.
Teams from across Victoria, including as far as Mildura and Warrnambool, as well as localised teams from Maryborough, Ballarat and Bendigo, will be part of the competition which will be held at the Carisbrook Trotting Complex on the weekend of February 25 and 26.
Local businesses are urged to get involved in the event, with Burgz doing the catering, while locals and volunteers are working to get their RSA’s to work behind the bar.
The Central Goldfields Shire are also set to provide buses to and from the event.
Maryborough 8 Ball Association’s Andy Martin spoke about the potential for the tournament to bring people into town, and the benefits it will have on the community.
“The format of the competition, and why it’s been so hard to host over the years, is that we have four divisions, with four tables per division. There’s nine teams in every division, with seven players and a spare, or seven players with two spares,” he said.
“Once all the math is done on that, we’re talking about 300 players and also people who are involved in other ways — so we’re looking at around the 500 mark for people that are coming into town.
“The last time we had it was in 1996, and there were eight tables, so it has grown. Considering we only have 120 members, it’s big for us to have the competition here.”
Martin spoke of the gruelling selection criteria that teams go through before earning selection to the Country Cup, noting that each team views their participation as a privilege.
“This event is only held with the 36 teams that are involved — so when a team drops out, another team on the waiting list comes on board, which makes it like an invitational tournament. It’s been going for 31 years now, and each team and pool organisation goes through the selection criteria before it starts,” he said.
It’s the first time that the Eight-Ball Carnival has been held in Maryborough since 1996 — back then, the event was held at Princes Park, with 18 teams competing in two divisions.
However, since then, the competition has blossomed, with team numbers doubling and four divisions set to do battle for the title.
Three local teams will compete throughout the tournament.
Maryborough 2 has been given the honour of competing in division one, while Maryborough 1 and Carisbrook will compete against one another in division four.
Their representation reflects a strong local tournament at the moment, which currently boasts 21 teams playing in two divisions around the greater Maryborough district, with teams located in the Maryborough town centre, while venturing as far as Campbells Creek, Dunolly and Avoca to play home and away matches across a 22-game season which runs from August through to mid-February.
